We’ve chosen poems by three of our Poetry Forum stalwarts as our envoys to this month’s InterBoard Poetry Competition. Two of the three poems were posted in the Forum Poets’ challenge exercises -- if you’re looking for a way to jump-start your poem-writing, visit the Forum’s Workshop folder and join in the fun. Our August entries are:

• “Colony Collapse Disorder,” a finely wrought topical poem by Deb (Douellet), voted by the Forum poets as winner in May’s centennial challenge (#100), and more recently nominated for the IBPC by Gloria (Swimkiller) as “contemporary editorial free verse on matters that matter.”
• “The Water Might Walk” by Tim J. Brennan (68degrees), currently in the running in challenge #103, nominated by Jules (TornScorpio) because it’s “beautiful, well-rounded and a treat for the lips to read aloud.”
• “Barren” by Mitchell Geller (EDowson), an elegiac sonnet with a lovely and unusual rhyme scheme (abccba deffed gg), just recently pulled from the pile of Poems for Comment by Laurie Byro.

Kudos and luck in the judging to all three poets. We’ll be back to report the results when judge Maurya Simon has selected the winning poems.

Please keep the nominations coming! Whenever you see a great poem posted on our Forum, no matter where it is, get over to the InterBoard Poetry Competition folder and nominate it! There are so many postings on the Forum that your Poetry Guides must rely on your help to sift out the worthy entries at the end of each month.